What is going on with Facebook?

W e know. We know. Facebook is all anyone is talking about these days.

Mark Zuckerberg is as we write this in a hearing on Capitol Hill, explaining how the internet works to a bunch of politicians who apparently understand about as much as our grandparents do (To be honest, my grandma is QUICK with her responses to everything I post on Facebook, so I think she understands even more!).

There’s that whole mess with Cambridge Analytica, and its possible your own personal data was shared without your permission with a company whose mission is to control people’s behaviors by learning what makes them tick. (You can check if your data was shared here on Facebook.)

Marketing Speaker, Writer and Influencer Grant Cardone went on a video rant and wrote a scathing letter to Facebook saying he was done spending millions in advertising and taking his audience of 6 million + elsewhere unless they stopped throttling him.

“Seems like you guys have enough going on with breaches and accusations of political influence and should get back to your mission; “Give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.” Until this is handled I will be moving my daily live streams to other channels and discontinuing advertising with your company.”

You have seen your own posts decreasing in reach with every passing week. You thought last year was bad, but 2018 is telling Organic Reach to “Hold my Drink.” And it’s probably not at the bottom, yet.

We are all feeling it. We are all freaking out in some way about what is going on with Facebook.

At the same time, we’re not completely freaking out.

This unsure time has been a reminder of a few important things about Facebook and Marketing in general:

We cannot control Facebook.

It could be gone tomorrow. If you’re entire marketing strategy is focused on Facebook, now is the time to freak out. You need a new strategy. Facebook should be a part, not all of your strategy.

Facebook IS Pay for Play.

You have to have an ad budget to get your message seen. If you don’t, the hard work you’ve put into building your audience will be in vain. The majority of your audience will not see your message. Studies show that just 2-10% of your audience will see a post at any time, organically, and to be honest- those numbers are probably out of date. We’ve seen (with larger pages, especially) those numbers are much lower.

But just because it’s Pay for Play doesn’t mean you shouldn’t post organic content.

You have to be strategic about the posts you DO put advertising dollars behind. Make sure you identify the goal of your post and the ad: Is it Sales? Look at conversion ads. It is a News Announcement you want a lot of eyes on? Consider a Boost. Don’t just press boost without thinking about the end goal. Facebook makes it EASY to Boost, and Boosts are usually not the best idea. We have an article coming SOON about this very topic, so get excited!

You should post non-advertised or boosted content to your page, but maybe not as often. Save your best stuff for ads. Re-post older content to keep your page active. Create the types of posts that Facebook loves- video and imagery. Even if it’s just a small percentage of your overall audience, there are actively engaged people looking to connect with you!

Consider a Facebook Group for your VIP fans.

Right now, Facebook Groups are getting great engagement. But warning: all good things must come to an end! We assume the great engagement will be throttled eventually (or become a paid feature).

Focus on what you can control.

And one thing has remained true over the last 10-15 years: Emailing your customers is important. Emails are something YOU control. You get to decide when to send emails. Your email list is still extremely valuable, and you should be focusing on your email strategy as much as you are thinking about your social media and Facebook strategy

Overall, Facebook is still an important part of any marketing strategy, but it shouldn’t be the whole strategy.

If you’re struggling with what to focus on in your business, how to handle Facebook, Facebook Ads management and Email Marketing, get in touch! We’d love to talk about what working with Method Agency looks like!